Posted by tennisplayer on October 28, 2007, at 9:11:13
In reply to Re: Cymbalta withdrawal, posted by headaches r us on October 24, 2007, at 7:49:30
headaches r us: hang in there. It does get better eventually. I am now 2-2/3 months post my last dose of Cymbalta. Please, please do not let some doctor talk you into substituting another antidepressant. It is just more of the same toxic, debilitaing stuff. Tapering Cymbalta would have been better, but since you are now 3 weeks off of it completely, I would say keep going. A site that will help with tips on getting past withdrawal is www.antidepressantsfacts.com/reaction.htm. One of the tips they give is to avoid an abundance of contact with your loved ones and friends (not total isolation though!), because they will find it almost impossible to believe that a supposedly mild antidepressant could cause such horrible side effects and mood altering, personality altering withdrawal symptoms. As a result you begin to lose faith in them as well as vice versa. Eventually they will understand, when, after a month or two, you get back to a more reasonable, less hyper irritated personality. Mainly they suggest an alkaline type diet, non stimulating activities and positive, calming activities like a quiet walk, sauna or hot shower or tub soak, uplifting movies or reading, positive thoughts, flowers and other art objects of beauty. (I know you probably don't have time for a lot of this stuff if you are having to work a lot, but when you are off work do positive, sedating type things (but not zombie like). I hate that because I like the gory CSI type dramas on TV, but I see the reasoning behind it. Fortunately after two and a half months I have lost almost all of the withdrawal symptoms, including nightmares, night sweats, insomnia, agitated movement (akathisa), compulsion to talk non-stop, headaches, flu=like symptoms, gastrointestinal burping, indigestion, acid stomach, craving of carbohydrates to the point of binging on carbohydrates and wanting no other food group (my cholesterol also went up to 398, and my blood pressure went up to 168/95. It has always normally run 120/70 until I took this horrible Cymbalta. I lost weight (20 pounds while on Cymbalta, but gained about 10 the first two weeks or so I was off of it. I have had to do the Atkins diet to get that weight off and try to get my cholesterol down. Contrary to the old way of thinking, the Atkins diet does not increase cholesterol; it lowers it. Because they now know that it is carbohydrates that stimulate your own body to make cholesterol that accounts for the bulk of the cholesterol circulating in your blood--not the cholesterol you eat in your diet. All those weeks (about 8) that I was binging on carbohydrates no doubt ran my cholesterol way up--it used to be 270, which was bad enough. Lipitor and Zocar make my heart skip beats so I can't take them. Sorry to go on and on. Hang in there.
poster:tennisplayer
thread:466069
URL: http://www.dr-bob.org/babble/wdrawl/20070929/msgs/791914.html